April 4, 1937: The congestion in Manhattan on this Sunday afternoon was not your typical mix of cars and trucks, but a parade of pachyderms, in town for the Ringling Brothers circus show. “The parade rumbled and clattered across the 125th Street Bridge, and from each corner children cried, ‘Hey, what’s in there?’ ” The Times reported from Uptown, where covered wagons containing the circus’s entertainments collected before the shows. “They pointed to canvas covered wagon No. 57, and it seemed a shame to yell back, ‘property,’ which would have been infinitely too prosaic, though true. So the answer was ‘lions,’ ‘tigers,’ ‘King Kong’ and ‘Mickey Mouse’ alternately, and in most cases the questioners were properly thrilled.”

The Lively Morgue is a daily photo blog from the New York Times in which an original photo from the newspaper's archives is reposted along with tidbits of information gleamed from the historical article it accompanied. Along with a rescan of the original photograph, the backs of each photo are also scanned, giving a behind-the-scenes look at the editorial process of one of the world's best newspapers.

Today's posting features a shot from April 4th, 1937 in which a long parade of elephants from a visiting circus marched their way through Times Square and Midtown Manhattan.

April 4, 1937: The congestion in Manhattan on this Sunday afternoon was not your typical mix of cars and trucks, but a parade of pachyderms, in town for the Ringling Brothers circus show. “The parade rumbled and clattered across the 125th Street Bridge, and from each corner children cried, ‘Hey, what’s in there?’ ” The Times reported from Uptown, where covered wagons containing the circus’s entertainments collected before the shows. “They pointed to canvas covered wagon No. 57, and it seemed a shame to yell back, ‘property,’ which would have been infinitely too prosaic, though true. So the answer was ‘lions,’ ‘tigers,’ ‘King Kong’ and ‘Mickey Mouse’ alternately, and in most cases the questioners were properly thrilled.”